A Novel Device of Reaching, Grasping, and Retrieving Task for Head-Fixed Mice.

ABSTRACT: Reaching, grasping, and retrieving movements are essential to our daily lives and are common in many mammalian species. To understand the mechanism for controlling this movement at the neural circuit level, it is necessary to observe the activity of individual neurons involved in the movement. For stable electrophysiological or optical recordings of neural activity in a behaving animal, head fixation effectively minimizes motion artifacts. Here, we developed a new device that allows mice to perform reaching, grasping, and retrieving movements during head fixation. In this method, agar cubes were presented as target objects in front of water-restricted mice, and the mice were able to reach, grasp, and retrieve them with their forelimb. The agar cubes were supplied by a custom-made automatic

SUBMITTER: Manita S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9133411 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature